


Resolution

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Brother Feels, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s11e06 Our Little World, Kissing, M/M, episode tag-kind of, post-Mark angst, seriously a lot of kissing, slightly suicidal thoughts, what if s11 was our last...?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-05-03 00:36:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5269952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>'But we've saved the world, Dean,' Sam protested weakly.</em>
</p><p> <em>'From ourselves and the shit we've woken up,' Dean said. 'There are monsters out there, sure, Sam. Things that go 'bump' in the night that people need to be protected from, but the thing is, there's something a lot worse out there…and that's us.</em></p><p>Sam and Dean and the cold, hard truth, with a theory about what it might take to put the Darkness away for good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Resolution

**Author's Note:**

> So, this took a 270 degree turn from where it started, did a cartwheel, stood on its ear, and then stuck its tongue out at me while waving bye-bye. It was supposed to have some good, hot sex, then some sweet, angsty sex, and all we wound up with was a ridiculous amount of face sucking and a terribly depressing confessional. Don't say I didn't warn you. I'll try harder on the sex next time...

The world was reeling, tilting like one of those old wooden game boards with the maze and the marble and a hole around every corner that only the swift turn of a knob could save it from tumbling down. Nothing could save Sam, though.

He felt dizzy and sick and for a second he was sure he was going to black out. There were impossible sounds echoing in his ears; sounds his brain knew were not real—the clank of chains, the rattle of bars, angry, frightened screams—but that the quickening of his pulse could not deny.

'Sam.'

Dean's hand was on his back, between his shoulder blades, solid, warm, pressing enough that Sam could make out the line of the scar across his palm where he'd sliced himself in summoning Death only a few weeks ago. 

There was a time there would have been a question mark at the end of his name, an unspoken 'are you okay?' But not anymore. They were so far past all that now. There was no question that neither of them were okay. They would never be okay again. Now, it was just a matter of survival, and for the first time in his whole life, Sam felt like they were running _out_ of time. 

'I can see it, Dean,' he rasped out, pressing a hand flat to his stomach against the rising nausea from the still flickering images behind his eyes. 'Christ…I can see the Cage, and I can hear… Dean, I can hear them. Begging.' 

Dean stepped in closer, pressed his other hand against Sam's chest and held him tight in the warm vice of his grip. 'Breathe, Sammy,' he urged quietly.

Sam gulped a breath, nodded—jerkily at first—but then he focused on the heat from his brother's hands, the steady beat of his own heart between them, and he took another breath and nodded again, more slowly.

'I'm okay. I'm good.'

He tried to straighten up, to wave Dean off, but his brother didn't move away. Instead, he stepped in closer, bringing the hand he'd had at Sam's back around to rest against the one Sam still had pressed to his rebellious stomach.

'No more secrets, Sam,' he whispered, hushed and warm against Sam's ear.

Sam trembled, brought his hand down from the mantle and covered Dean's where it spread against his chest, then he turned in his brother's arms and looked him in the eye.

'No. No more secrets,' he said quietly, and paused to search his brother's gaze. 'How did she get away?'

A year ago, six months ago, even six weeks ago, Dean would have scoffed and pulled away and denied what Sam was insinuating; but not now, and that was different. Different in a good way that Sam had not been able to define the whithertos and wherefore of yet, but it was good nonetheless.

Dean held Sam's gaze. 'I can't kill her. I can't even hurt her.'

'Why?' Sam asked. It was innocent, no accusation, just a quest for information that would help him understand.

'In her words, we're bound.' He paused to cup his hands at the sides of Sam's neck, to thumb his strong, stubbled jaw with easy, slow strokes, because Sam was still breathing shallow and a little uneven. He continued, 'I don't know what that means, and I don't know how deep it goes.'

Sam nodded again, broke eye contact, but reached up to grip Dean's wrists and feel his steady, beating pulse under the skin.

'I can hear them, Dean. Begging to be set free. They're afraid…'

'Of what?'

'Of her.' Sam pulled in a shaky breath. 'Everyone's afraid of her, Dean, and I…I am, too.'

Dean gave a little squeeze of his fingers at Sam's neck. 'Sammy, we're gonna get her. Don't worry.'

'How, Dean? How do we kill something even God couldn't?'

Dean shook his head. 'We don't know that he couldn't. Only that he _didn't_. Everything bleeds, Sammy. One way or another. And if it bleeds—'

'—we can kill it,' Sam finished automatically.

'Yeah,' Dean said. 'Yeah, we can.'

'But you said you were bound to her. You can't hurt her.'

'Well, let her try taking another swing at you and see just how well that holds up for her,' Dean replied. Sam huffed a sad little laugh, and Dean waited for a rejoinder, but it didn't come. Instead, Sam dragged his eyes back up to Dean's and the fear in them was almost a physical force. 'We'll get this done,' Dean reassured. 'Whatever it takes.'

Sam swallowed, slow and thick and audible. 'What if it takes too much, Dean?'

Billie's words came back to him on a dry, brittle memory, singed with fever and fire and the Darkness. 'Dean, what if…what if this is it? What if there are no more second chances, or thirds, or fourths? What if we can't win this one?'

Dean tipped his head forward to rest it against Sam's. 'Trust me, little brother, it's a possibility I've considered.'

The admission was so soft, so low, Sam had to repeat the words in his own head once just to convince himself he'd heard them.

'You…have?'

Dean nodded slow, eyes closed against the grim possibility he had laid out before them. He moved closer, so that their thighs brushed together and their boots slotted side by side. Sam's hands went automatically to rest at Dean's hips, and Dean threaded his fingers back into Sam's hair, scratching lightly, steadily, as a distraction to himself or maybe just as a familiar comfort.

'Look at us, Sammy,' he whispered. 'Look at what we are, and what we've done. Death was right when he said he'd have to take you out of the equation. He'd've had to do the same with me were the shoe on the other foot, too,' he added quickly before Sam could object. 'Point is…how far we'll go. For each other.'

Sam could see the direction this was going, clearly, whether he wanted to or not. 'But we've saved the world, Dean,' he protested weakly.

'From ourselves and the shit we've woken up,' Dean said. Sam made a broken noise in his throat. Dean tilted his head just enough to press his lips to the corner of Sam's mouth. 'There are monsters out there, sure, Sam. Things that go 'bump' in the night that people need to be protected from, but the thing is, there's something a lot worse out there…and that's us.

'Our family, Sammy, is cursed. Has been from the get go. By Heaven's decree or Hell's meddling—it doesn't really matter. Mom sold her soul for Dad, Dad sold his soul for me, and I sold mine for you.'

'Dean, I—'

'No,' Dean pressed another chaste kiss to the other corner of Sam's mouth. 'Don't you think for a second I regret it. I never have. I never will. But the truth is, the family business has always been about us saving each other.' Dean puffed a quiet laugh. 'Only one of us ever did a damn selfless thing was you, jumping in that hole for the good of humanity and all angel-kind.

'My point, Sam, is that it's time to put it to bed. Not just the Darkness, but all of it.'

Sam dragged in a stuttering breath, tipped his face to nip lightly at Dean's lower lip, hold it in his teeth for a heartbeat before he spoke in a soft, breathless rush,

'And if it takes us both to do it?'

'Curtain time, Sammy,' Dean answered softly and kneaded his fingertips into Sam's scalp with increasing pressure, as if to drive the true meaning of his words that much deeper.

'We go together,' Sam whispered against Dean's mouth, lifted his hands to cradle his brother's jaw.

'Yup. 'S the only way it works, little brother. Something we should have learned a long time ago.' Dean brought one hand forward and smoothed a thumb over Sam's bottom lip. 'Can't be one of us without the other.'

'Two halves of the same whole.'

'Each other's greatest strength and greatest weakness.'

'Soul mates,' Sam breathed.

'Soul mates,' Dean said.

They stood there for a long time, still, under the quiet weight of the realization and silent resolution; the silk of Sam's hair threaded through the fingers of Dean's hand; the raspy stubble of Dean's jaw rough beneath Sam's palms; breathing in each other's air, not just sharing the same space, but occupying it completely—together.

It was odd, having decided this was the end of the line, coming to the mutual agreement that their priority would _not_ be to save each other in this but to sacrifice themselves and each other—together—instead. For the lasting greater good. Sam felt light, almost giddy with anticipation that this life-long war of attrition might finally be coming to an end. For them at least.

They would leave behind a legacy to be honored and fought in the name of, against all the things that lurked in the shadows, for generations to come. But this fight…it would be their last.

'Sammy?' Dean asked in a hushed, concerned voice as he thumbed tears from his brother's pale cheeks.

There it was, that question mark; that silent 'you with me?'

Sam bent his neck, pressed his nose under Dean's jaw and mouthed absently, softly, at the tender, thin skin down the side of his neck. 'All the way, Dean,' he answered the unspoken question. 'No regrets.'

Dean made a soft sound somewhere in the neighborhood of a reluctant whimper, and Sam pulled back a little, looked up from under his lashes. Dean groaned then and kissed him, long and hard and sudden, poured himself into it until they had to part, breathless from lack of oxygen. Dean stayed close, breathed into the corner of Sam's mouth, cradled the back of his head firmly in one broad palm, and Sam could hear a confession in his sustained silence. He inched closer, pressing their bodies flush, fitting them together as easily now as Dean had done from that very first night in the aftermath of fire and tears when he curled around his baby brother in the backseat of the Impala while John surveyed the ruin of his past and floundered for a path into the future; and then every night thereafter that Sam had nestled safe in the curve of his older brother's body.

'No. Regrets,' he repeated softly. 'My life has been…extraordinary.'

'That's putting it mildly,' Dean chided with a wry laugh, a bit brittle with guilt at the edges.

Sam pulled back enough to make a solid connection with Dean's gaze. 'I am where I need to be, where I _want_ to be.'

'Sammy—'

'Because this life meant you,' Sam cut him off gently. 

Dean kissed him again then, soft and needy and a little bit desperate, molded their mouths together under heat and pressure until their lips were tingling and so lost in sensation that neither was sure where one ended and the other began. Sam felt a curl of heat lick deep in his belly, knew that the tilt of a head, the slick slide of a tongue, the soft scrape of teeth just so, had the potential to turn that heat into unrestrained wanting. Dean felt it, too, was holding on the fine edge of it, keeping his tongue behind his teeth and his mouth closed, because here in the in between was what he and Sam were really about. There were no rules for them. Never had been. There was no definition, no precedent to which to compare them. They walked the razor edges and the grey spaces that the rest of the world could not, in order to keep it and each other safe. And if that road had led them to an unconventional love, to an unstoppable passion with the incendiary potential to burn the whole universe to a cinder, it was only fitting as unique as they were.

Dean shifted his weight, hauled Sam in closer, dropped a hand to drive it up under Sam's shirt and skate his palm across his flank, his ribs, came to rest splayed against his spine and tug their hips flush. He could feel Sam through his jeans, thick and hard, his body responding to all the emotional turmoil in the only fashion it knew, and Dean's answered in kind.

Sam made a sound in the back of his throat, a kind of mewling whimper, and Dean heard it for the plea it was. He slanted his mouth against Sam's, opened, and swept his tongue once across his lips. Sam folded into him, opening his mouth and inviting Dean to delve deep and hard with his hot, plush tongue. Sam's hands fluttered briefly at Dean's hips, back, chest, before finding purchase on the perfect curve of his ass and hooking there hungrily like the possessive talons of some giant bird of prey. 

Dean fitted himself closer, widened his stance, bracketing Sam's legs with his own before pushing them both the few inches back up against the wall. Sam let out a huff as his shoulder blades connected solidly and Dean pinned him with a thrust of his hips.

It had been a long time. 

The Mark had acted like a lever, slowly prising them apart over the last year, freezing fear and mistrust like water into the fissures that had already existed between them and cracking them wide open. Sam had tried hard to hold onto Dean, to keep him close and draw him back to the normalcy of their lives. Normal for them anyway. But the Mark sat in Dean's gut and burned with its ever present hunger for blood and violence, its constant whispering a splinter in his mind that drove deeper and deeper, cutting through the, albeit skewed but sturdy, moral fabric that made Dean the man he was, breaking him down and bending him more and more toward the demon he had been. In fear of himself and what he might do to Sam, Dean kept him at arm's length, evaded his advances, and put up walls in spaces between them that had never existed before; walls Sam had begun to doubt he would ever be able to scale.

Even with the Mark gone, Dean was overly cautious with him, almost solicitous, like he felt he had committed some great sin for which there was no redemption. And while the changes were nice, comforting in the solidarity that was being rekindled between them, Sam still felt like he was walking on eggshells, just of another kind, waiting for Dean to shut him out again and turn him away. 

Now, with visions of the Cage ghosting through his mind, and the screams of archangels scraping across his soul, Sam felt something he hadn't in a very long time. Fear. The deep kind that lived in the marrow of the bones; the kind that recognized an ending and a defeat, an impossible battle; the kind that lent power and courage to rise and fight even in the face of that indomitable foe…but at a very high price. And Sam needed Dean to hold him firm in the face of that fear.

He hadn't felt anything like it since he plunged into the Cage, and even then it was not so potent. He had accepted it then with the certainty that his actions would save his brother and the world. This time there were no such assurances and the cost would be higher. If Dean was right, it would take them both against the Darkness, and who knew how many others would be sacrificed before it was all over.

So, the time for caution and eggshells and uncertainties was over.

As if he'd read Sam's mind, Dean pulled back, just enough to look him in the eyes. He brought his hands back up to cradle Sam's jaw, pressed his thumbs against wet, pink, slightly parted lips to feel his panting breaths, and smoothed the pads out to the corners, up and over Sam's sharp, high cheekbones.

'De—' Sam started.

'Shhh. Shh, Sam,' Dean hushed him, keeping eye contact. 'I've been trying to find my way back. For a long while now. Don't know if I ever will, not all the way. The things I did, said—Sammy, not all of that can just be forgiven, even if you think so, even if it doesn't matter to you. It matters to me, and I have to pay for it.'

Sam leaned in for another kiss, this one surer, stronger, more demanding. 'No,' he said into Dean's mouth. 'You've paid, Dean. We've both paid, and we _will_ pay. But I—' He faltered, the kiss slip-sliding into something pushing the boundaries of abandon. 'I want this, Dean. I _want_ my brother back. The man who's stood by my side longer than I can remember, kept my compass true and my ass out of the fire even at the cost of his own life. Dean. If this is going to be our last stand, then please… Please, let me have this. Let me have you.'

Dean stared at him for a moment, resisting Sam's continued attempts to reach his lips, lick at him, press into him; until he smiled, lopsided and with the ghost of his old cockiness. 'Always so damn demanding. And spoiled.' 

He sighed, resigned and exaggerated, but with a still shaky, uncertain edge to it, forced in a way that said he was doing what he had always done and pushing his own needs out of the way for Sam's benefit. Sam wanted to shove him, to get good and riled, to make him take something for himself instead of always giving, to Sam and everyone else. He jerked Dean closer, grabbed at the sides of his head, digging his fingers into the short hairs at the base of his skull.

'I can't make you see,' he whispered fiercely, 'how strong you are, have always been. Dean Winchester, you are the best of men— _because_ you believe you are not.'

He dragged Dean's mouth to his then, not giving his brother any more choice, or time for thoughts on whether he could, or should, or what the morning would bring with it when they woke a mass of tangled limbs and dried sweat and streaks of cum crusted across their chests and bellies. He was done with words; done with doubts; done with fears. He wanted, and the darkness that still slumbered deep and quiet and subdued beneath the power of his will built up over the years, murmured in its sleep of taking, taking what he wanted and all of Heaven and Hell be damned for his defiance. 

Dean tensed, briefly, before he let out a relieved little sigh. Sam whined in frustration over his brother's acquiescence, but it was fleeting, and he shoved it back, determined to show him they were equals, in this as in all things. Dean pushed into him, trapped him against the wall, but his mouth was pliant beneath Sam's. Sam didn't want a fight, but he did want a return. He wanted the fiery possession with which Dean had always claimed him in the past, commanding his body and soul through its worship and veneration.

He pushed off the wall, tumbled them toward the couch, and turned in one sweeping move to drag them both down. Dean stretched out on top of him, one knee planted firmly between Sam's thighs in the cushions. Sam's fingers hooked in Dean's belt loops and curled there to tug him closer. Dean locked his elbows and hung above him, breath coming in shocky little pants, eyes alight.

'Sam…I was so hungry…for blood, for the fight.' He bit at his bottom lip, eyes fluttering shut on regret. 'But it only used what was already there; the Mark only amplified the black that lived—lives—deep down in me.' His eyes snapped back open, piercing green with furious remembrance. 'I was the perfect key to her lock. I was a made fit for the Darkness, everything she needed to wield me as a weapon in her vengeance.'

Sam stroked his cheek gently. 'Dean, what are you saying?'

'The Mark is her brand, Sammy. God may have created it to bind her, but it binds her Keeper as well, and brands them with her desires, her betrayal, her fury. It builds on that part of her that is at the bottom of every human soul.' Dean gave a shake of his head, sagged down until his forehead rested in the hollow of Sam's throat, and Sam's hands moved to stroke in little, gentle circles through his hair. 'The Mark is gone, Sam, but what made it choose me, what made me fit for her, is still there. It was always there…will always be there.'

'And you think that makes you evil?' Sam said. 'You think that changes anything about you that would make me want you any less? Me? The 'boy who would be king of Hell' with the demon blood in his veins?'

'Sammy…'

'No, Dean. No. What you see as flaws, as darkness in your heart, or soul, or whatever it is the Mark preyed on…you have always used in the service of good. You have never let it rule you,' Sam said.

'I was a _demon_ , Sam.'

'Chosen child-commander for all the armies of Hell,' Sam countered.

Dean stared. 

Sam stared back.

'Together. Equals,' Sam murmured, cupping Dean's face again in his hands. 'Not one without the other. We are our own scale and balance.'

Dean's eyes flicked back and forth, reading deep into the brightly colored puzzle of his brother's gaze. He finally nodded. Sam smiled slow and easy. 

'Now. Come down here and kiss me, because this might be our last night on earth, and you wouldn't want to waste it,' he teased. 

Dean grinned, thin and sly. 'Stealing my lines, baby brother.'

Sam shrugged a little, licked his lips, and hooked his leg around the back of Dean's thighs. 'You can use it on me tomorrow night.'

Dean dropped down into the cradle of Sam's hips, rolled against the hard line of heat he found waiting for him there. 'And the night after?'

'For all the nights that are left,' Sam answered.

Dean kissed him, stroked his hair back, licked at his lips until they parted to let him in, let him sweep soft and warm inside Sam's eager mouth. 'Won't last forever, Sammy,' he murmured.

Sam sighed, looped his arms around Dean's back and snugged them together. 'But we have tonight.'

Dean chuckled deep and warm. 'So, who needs tomorrow?'

Sam grinned against Dean's mouth and breathed, 'Thank you, Bob Seger.'

Dean laughed out loud, and Sam felt it through his whole body, vibrating up and down his brother's spine, and out into his limbs. It felt good, felt wonderful. Healing. If this was all they had; if tomorrow brought the Darkness to their door, and the curtain fell on them for good and all; even if Billie were telling the truth and the Reapers found a way to lose the brothers into oblivion and there were no more roundtrip tickets; Sam could go happy with that sound in his ears, washing his heart clean of its fear and drowning out the clanking groan of chains and rattle of bars. At least for now.

'Sammy.'

No question mark.

'Yeah, Dean.'

No secrets, no uncertainties. No doubts.

'All the way, brother.'

Just resolution.

'All the way.'


End file.
